Question 7 by Richard Flanagan review – the Booker winner’s beautiful, unclassifiable memoir-cum-novel

In seeking to understand his parents and his life, Flanagan merges memory and fiction to ponder the random nature of existence, resulting in a masterpiece of subtlety and depth

Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War by Jonathan Dimbleby review – the Red army’s advance into history

A fresh take on Operation Bagration, the colossal eastern front offensive in the second world war, is the author and broadcaster’s best book yet – and shows how next to the Soviets, the Germans’ worst enemy was Hitler

Private Revolutions by Yuan Yang review – the women who tried to carve a path in a new China

In this intimate study of a period of upheaval, a Chinese-born writer uncovers the stories of four young citizens whose lives were transformed by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms – and the obstacles they strove to overcome

Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century by Simon Kuper review – chronicle of a French revelation

This revealing memoir about the author’s 20 years in the City of Light identifies the complex codes of behaviour that newcomers are obliged to master

What a Fool Believes by Michael McDonald review – the soul singer with a nature as sweet as his voice

From falling foul of Ray Charles to writing with Burt Bacharach and singing with Steely Dan, McDonald has led a fascinating, if addiction-fuelled, life, but his memoir errs on the side of cliche

One Ukrainian Summer by Viv Groskop review – young love in the birthplace of Zelenskiy

In this evocative, amusing memoir, the author and podcaster recounts her 1990s fling with a guitarist – and considers whether the Russia-Ukraine conflict could have been foreseen

In brief: A Person Is a Prayer; Warming Up; The Seventh Son – reviews

A moving family saga of migration and meaning; how sport is being changed by the climate crisis; and Sebastian Faulks’s imaginative genetics thriller

Parade by Rachel Cusk review – a brilliant and unsettling feat

With this freewheeling examination of creation, gender and art, the bold and original Cusk is ever more determined to write about life precisely as she finds it

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden review – the Dutch house

An outsider shatters the quiet domestic life of a lonely young woman in this thrilling debut set in post Nazi-era Netherlands

Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

Golden numbers; an intergalactic snail trail; an immersive guide to art; a tale of hope amid poverty; and a girl who can’t lie

Thunderclap by Laura Cumming audiobook review – the golden age of Dutch art

The Observer’s art critic combines the stories of the painter Carel Fabritius with that of her artist father, in a memoir of art and life cut suddenly short

What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh review – making sense of senseless violence

An attempt to understand Israeli actions in Gaza, and a lament that the Palestinian story is still not properly heard

Beating Hearts review – operatic French gangster film suffers from bloat

Gilles Lelouche’s new movie aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy but buckles under the weight of its own naivety

Peripathetic by Cher Tan review – essays on punk, work and the internet are incredibly good fun

Tan’s fast-paced, acidic essays are guided by big ideas, drawing on her personal story to speak to the invisible, powerful forces that shape us all

Hey, Zoey by Sarah Crossan review – ‘the perfect girlfriend’

The jigsaw of a repressed wife’s life is pieced together in the story of love triangle with an AI twist